“May peace be with you.”
It was the first sentence pronounced by Pope Leo XIV after being presented Thursday as the new chief of the 1.4 billion Catholics in the world. From the Balcony of the Saint-Pierre Basilica, the first American pontift then reminded the public that it was also the first words that Jesus pronounced after his resurrection.
“It is the peace of resurrected Christ,” continued man born Robert Francis, “an unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering peace.”
My eyes and my heart have embarked on pride as I listened to his short speech – like a Catholic, yes, but above all as a American.
Next month will mark a decade since Donald Trump went down to a Golden Escalator in his Manhattan Homonym Tour to announce his 2016 presidential campaign and offer his own version of Spiritual Renewal. Her Gospel Maga was not based on the words of Jesus, but rather American exceptionalism at worst: isolationism, jingism, the grievance, xenophobia and the idea that you should take care of yourself and kiss everyone.
Instead of finding salvation, the Americans are more paranoid and divided than ever. We are looking for the issuance of our national discomfort from anywhere and everywhere, little in vain. But in Pope Leo, we now have an American leader who can remind us and the world what the United States represents to its best.
Pastor Antonio Cacciapuoti is released after having directed the Catholics in the prayer at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame des Anges in a mass Thursday to welcome the native Cardinal of Chicago, Robert Francis, planned as a new Pope.
(CARLIN STIEHL / LOS Angeles Times)
Its ancestry is multicultural – French, Italian, black, Hispanic – and its maternal grandparents have moved from New Orleans to Chicago. He went to school and church on the southern side of the blue -collar workers in Chicago, then attended Villanova University. The young Robert Prevost became a missionary in Peru for the Augustinians before going to Rome to direct the religious order, which focuses on helping the marginalization of society.
He applied this life experience to his last role before becoming a pope: helping the late Pope Francis to find candidates for the bishop around the world, beyond the traditional recruitment zones of Europe and the Americas. However, he has never moved away from his roots, frequently returning to Chicago to meet friends, eat in favorite places and root for White Sox (talk about a man who sympathizes with the miserable of the earth!).
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Above all, the arc of the career of Pope Leo testifies to the way in which real strength and success come from service for others – something that Americans have been feeling long was important for a healthy democracy, but that was not recently emphasized by the powers in place. The new pope said to the faithful as much in his inaugural speech, urging that they are “a church that works, a church that always seeks peace, which always seeks charity, which always seeks to be close, especially those who suffer.”
Such a language is a heresy for too many supporters of Trump, some of whom already ransack the Pope Leo as an anti-American. They have moved away from what the United States is at its best, the country I love. (Trump, for his part, congratulated Pope Leo on social networks, describing his election as “a great honor for our country”)))
People listen to a sermon during mass at Holy Name cathedral in Chicago on Friday.
(Erin Hooley / Associated Press)
In my America, like Pope Leo, speaking several languages ​​and being a citizen of several countries is normal, not betrayal – Leo is a double Peruvian American citizen who speaks five languages. My America is not for fear but of embrace, a pope Leo of the vision of the world echoes when he called us to accept others to “open arms”, in particular “all those who need our charity, our presence, our dialogue and our love”.
Contrary to what Trump insists, we remain the largest country in the world. This is why our nation has attracted so many immigrants since its foundation and continues to do so. People come here to be part of our great experience, based on the ideal of equality and prosperity, that everything is possible if you put the work for yourself and for others.
The interior of the St. Mary Catholic Church of the Assumption now closed in Chicago. Sainte-Marie de l’Assomption was the church to which Pope Leo XIV attended the beginning of his life.
(Jim Vonduska / Getty Images)
The selection of Pope Leo by the College of Cardinals to a position deemed impossible for a son of Uncle Sam to occupy is not only a reprimand of Trump’s vision for an imperial of the United States. It is a challenge for Americans to rely on the side of us who is known to be charitable, not all that Trump tries to transform us.
We, the Americans, must also take note of the choice of Leo XIV for his papal name. He has not yet offered reason, but many Vatican observers have hypothesized that he honored the last pontiff who went there.
Pope Leo XIII was a fierce defender for workers and oppressed during the last part of the 19th century, an era also responsible for technological and political upheavals. In an encyclical of 1899, he warned American Catholics not to move away from the teachings of the Church in the name of “the spirit of age”, arguing that there was more in good life than the pursuit of money and individualism.
When I read this now, I think of the push well financed by the conservative American Catholics to undermine Pope Francis and sow the internal doubt and dissent, all because he always reminded us to live according to the warnings of Jesus to help “the least of them”. Pope Leo praised his predecessor for his “courageous voice”, leaving the little mystery in the place where he was standing on Francis’ question.
We are perpetually dissatisfied people, so I don’t know how many of us – Catholics or not – will take into account the invitation of Pope Leo to embrace peace and reflect on what we can do to improve all. But he seemed to have Americans in his mind in his first homily as a pope.
The message of the charitable body and the faith of the Gospel is sometimes rejected as “intended for the weak and unintelligent” in a world where “other titles are preferred, such as technology, money, success, power or pleasure,” Leo to the cardinals before him.
Invoking images used by the American presidents of Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, he said that God called him to direct the church “so that it is more and more fully a city on a hill, a vintage of salvation sailing in the waters of history and a beacon which illuminates the dark nights of this world.”
These words have long reminded Americans our obligation to be great. That the example of Pope Leo, not Trump’s Bloviations, stimulates it again.
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